Funds vex over ‘portfolio warming’
All good money managers expect to outperform their benchmark, and by one such metric the French insurer and investor Axa SA recently scored a market-beating success. Not by delivering higher returns, but by generating a lower level of global warming.
If human activity is driving carbon emissions and temperatures to dangerous highs, then a giant asset owner like Axa with a 650 billion-euro ($790 billion) horde of stocks, corporate bonds and sovereign debt is one of the principal proprietors of climate change. In theory, that means every investment portfolio can be evaluated for the "warming potential" of its underlying assets.
After a painstaking process of self-evaluation that took two years, including a significant shift away from heavy polluters, Axa concluded its assets would warm the planet by 0.8 degrees Celsius less than if it held all the companies in major global stock and bond indexes. That was good news for an early adopter of portfoliowarming metrics.
The bad news: Axa's portfolio implied a temperature increase of almost 3°C above preindustrial levels by 2100. At that level, scientists warn of mass extinctions of animal species, large parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable due to extreme heat, rising sea levels swallowing up coastal cities, and lush rainforests turning into savannas. It also would put Axa, despite its climate-conscious efforts, on the wrong side of the 2015 Paris Agreement in which every nation agreed to limit warming to 2°C.
And it's not only Axa that's taking the temperature of its assets. UK insurer Aviva Plc and Japan's $1.7 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund have published data on warming potential. New Yorkbased BlackRock Inc, with $8.7 trillion of assets, plans to do the same for some of its funds. The practice is likely to spread in the years ahead.
Hyderabad Globe FC won the South India invitational football championship at Gadwal, Telangana, by defeating host Gadwal District Football Association by a solitary goal scored by Mohammed Sohrab.
Sohrab who was the hero of the tournament, who scored the winning goal for Globe from the penalty spot in the 60th minute after his teammate Mohd Ehtesham was brought down in the box by a rival defender.
The winners were awarded with `1 lakh as cash prize while the runners-up received `50,000.
Earlier in the semifinal, Globe beat Tamil Nadu State Police team, which is all-India police champion, 6-5 in sudden death after teams were locked 11 in regulation time.
Police took the lead in the 25th minute via Shiva’s superb freekick to keep the lead at half-time. However, Globe bounced back strongly in the second half and equalised with a superb header by Mohd Sohrab to take the match into extra time, in which both teams failed to score, thanks to tight rival defences. Shaik Umair and Wahed Khan were Globe’s best back men while young goalkeeper Mohd Faiz was too good under the bar, saving two penalties for the Police team.
In the quarters, beat Nizamabad Sohrab scoring the goal.
In the pre-quarterfinal, Globe team defeated Nellore FC 3-1. Mohd Sohrab was the hero for Globe, scoring a hat-trick while Sudhaker reduced the margin for Nellore team.
Globe 1-0, allimportant